Capture it All

The vibrant colors and endless diversity of aquatic life provide one of the richest photography experiences imaginable. The technology in Olympus Digital Underwater Housings allows divers, from beginner to divemaster, capture worry-free images of unique underwater scenes. Each Olympus housing features a large, responsive shutter button, precision zoom lever, and a tight O-ring main seal with a safety lock. Find the housing that fits your camera, and dive in!

Lesson 1: How to care for
your underwater housing

Getting started: maintenance supplies

To complete your underwater housing maintenance, you will need cotton balls, a blower, a silica gel bag, grease for the O-ring and an O-ring remover. Be sure to bring these items with you on all your diving trips.

Seawater

Seawater is extremely harmful to your digital camera. When you're out of the water and at a dry location, place a towel or a mat on your work surface. Use your blower to remove drops of water, particles, dust or sand trapped in the small gaps that exist in the backside of the protector's cover. Keep the lens pointed down as you carefully open the cover so as not to let any seawater inside.

Clean the O-ring

Remove the O-ring using the O-ring remover. Clear away any sand, seawater, old grease that may be caught in the O-ring area. Clean the indented sections using cotton swabs. When seawater dries, it turns into grains of salt and could damage the quality of the O-ring. Make sure to clean the O-ring and O-ring housing carefully.

Greasing

The O-ring needs to stay pliable and smooth to remain watertight - this means you need to keep it clean and grease it regularly. You do not need to use a large amount of grease, but if you use too little the O-ring could become stiff or wear out and could succumb to infiltration. Hair and sand can also cause infiltration damage.

Placing the camera in the housing

In order to minimize the opening and closing of the housing cover, we recommend you use an xD Picture Card with a large amount of memory. Also, make sure your battery is fully charged. Lastly, be sure to insert a new silica gel bag and make sure the long glued section of the silica gel bag is facing inward before you close the housing.

Checking the functions

After placing the camera in the protector, make sure all buttons including the shutter and zoom lever work normally. Next, make sure the camera is snug in the housing without shaking or wobbling. When using your camera with the housing, don't drop it, and keep it away from high temperatures and intense humidity.

Infiltration test

After you finish the steps above, it's time to test the housing Slowly immerse the protector in a tank of water and see if any water comes in. First, dip for three seconds and then pull it out. If the O-ring is not functioning properly, water could leak in at this stage. Next, immerse for 30 seconds, and check. Lastly, immerse for three minutes. While immersing, try pushing the various buttons to test for leaks.

Is your housing leaking?

If you find a leak during the infiltration test, slowly pull the camera out of the water. Never yank it out of the water. Open the cover carefully so as not to wet the camera. Go over the maintenance procedure once more. If infiltration occurs again, you may need to change your O-ring with a new one. It is a good idea to have an extra O-ring on hand. In case of infiltration, immediately dry off your camera. Take out the batteries and memory device and dry them as needed. If necessary, contact your nearest OLYMPUS authorized service station or distributor.

Where to do the maintenance?

Find an air-conditioned humidity-free, dust-free, brightly lit room to conduct your maintenance work. In resort hotels, the bathroom is the best place because it has good lighting and less dust compared to other parts of the hotel room.

CautionTo use the product safely and correctly, please read the manual before using.